Unified Government, Bill Approval, and the Legislative Weight of the President

This article proposes a new approach to measuring the legislative weight of the president and Congress based on the approval of each actor’s legislative agenda. The authors focus on presidential systems where presidents possess both formal authority to introduce their own bills and a variety of prer...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Comparative political studies 2010-04, Vol.43 (4), p.511-534
Main Authors: Alemán, Eduardo, Calvo, Ernesto
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Approval
Argentina
Divided government
Empirical research
Executive power
Executive-legislative relations
Government bill
Government relations
Legislation
Legislative Bodies
Legislative process
Legislatures
Political programmes
Presidential system
Presidential Systems
Presidents
Productivity
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Summary:This article proposes a new approach to measuring the legislative weight of the president and Congress based on the approval of each actor’s legislative agenda. The authors focus on presidential systems where presidents possess both formal authority to introduce their own bills and a variety of prerogatives to influence the passage of legislation. The authors argue that the legislative weight of the president varies over time in response to contextual political variables. After devising a general model to measure changes in the legislative weight of the president vis-à-vis Congress, the authors empirically test their propositions using data from Argentina. The results indicate that the policy and productivity weights of the president actually increase in the absence of unified government.
ISSN:0010-4140
1552-3829
DOI:10.1177/0010414009355534